Polls Undercount Support for Same-Sex “Marriage” Ban

Measures on 5 state ballots likely to pass despite survey results

Excerpted from Polls Undercount Support for Same-Sex Marriage Ban, by Wyatt Buchanon, published Oct 27, 2006, by San Francisco Chronicle:

…Bans are expected to pass Nov. 7 in Idaho, Virginia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. The races still appear close in Colorado, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Polls have been published on the proposed constitutional amendments in six of those states, and in all six, the most recent survey showed the bans passing – in Arizona by a margin of 9 percentage points, and in Tennessee by 53 percentage points…

“We’ve seen it, I think, in every single case, that it is underpolled every single time,” said Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs at the conservative Family Research Council. “I’ve seen higher, but normally we would add 5 to 10 percentage points to any polling.”

Gay rights supporters blame people’s unwillingness to express an anti-gay opinion to a pollster for the discrepancy between polls and the ballot box, and McClusky agrees.

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